244 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



with an exhibit. At any rate, it was with no small degree of 

 pleasure that I received from my friend Major Robertson, in 

 December last, six bred specimens of the true variata, which 

 emerged in May, 1911, from larvae taken on small ornamental 

 spruce in his own neighbourhood (Chandlers Ford). They had 

 struck him as a peculiar form, quite different from anything 

 which he had seen before, nor were they familiar to any of his 

 friends who had seen them ; but not being acquainted with the 

 particulars which I have set forth above, he was naturally 

 unprepared for my identification. I promised him at the time 

 that I would publish a note on the discovery, but asked leave to 

 postpone it for a little, expecting shortly to be working at the 

 genus in preparation for Seitz's * Macro-Lepidoptera of the 

 World.' 



In the meantime Major Robertson has been successful in 

 breeding it again, so that it is evidently now established, 

 however it may have been introduced. He has recently pre- 

 sented to the British Museum a very nice series (mostly males, 

 but including two females) bred in the middle of May ; these I 

 have had the pleasure of examining. They vary moderately, 

 but never in such wise that they could be mistaken for obeliscata. 

 Indeed, I may mention, as illustrating to those readers who 

 have not yet seen them the wideness of the divergence, that 

 Mr. J. Hartley Durrant (in the neighbourhood of whose Thet- 

 ^ford home obeliscata used absolutely to swarm) did not at all 

 recognize them, and assured me he had never seen a specimen 

 approaching them. The width and strength of the median 

 band varies a good deal, the tone of colour slightly, some being 

 greyer, some browner; but none approach the red-brown of 

 obeliscata, nor the melanism of its ab. obliterata. The interest- 

 ing ab. stragulata Hb. ( = vitiosata, Frr. = rcsinaria, Peyer.) has 

 not yet occurred among Major Robertson's forms. 



In addition to the colour difference, which alone is used in 

 Staudinger's ' Catalog ' {variata = " forma grisescens," obeliscata 

 = "forma brunnea vel fulva"), and the jagged median band 

 mentioned by Doubleday (see above) — both good characters — 

 true variata can nearly always be differentiated at a glance by its 

 better-marked and strongly dentate subterminal line (often very 

 clear and pale) and better- marked hind wing, nearly always with 

 a distinct central spot and not rarely with a fairly definite post- 

 median line. It is only in a few very weakly marked specimens 

 that these characters can become obliterated ; I believe that 

 wherever the course of the pale postmedian line of the fore 

 wing can be seen at all in either species, it will be found abso- 

 lutely reliable. 



It will be interesting to see, now that Major Robertson's dis- 

 covery has called attention to the matter, to what extent variata 

 really is established in Britain, and how far it maintains the 



